Steve Cole Middle Fiction 4

by Steve Cole

  “Neigh,” said Maloney (possibly pony for “You should’ve hopped over it, you dummy”).

  I filled Lady Jemima in on all we’d overheard.

  “Well, heavens to Betsy! I said that taking the elixir had left Seerblight not all there but I knew not how true my words were!” Jem gave a tinkling laugh, which she stifled when she saw Sir Guy and I were not amused. “His elixir of eternal life must have contained a tiny amount of pow-powder – stopping his flesh and bones from ageing and rotting. However, over the centuries it’s nibbled away at his physical form.”

  “Maybe that’s why he went after you and all those other pow-powdered people,” I said. “To experiment on you, trying to find a way to reverse the condition?”

  If Sir Guy’s brains hadn’t been as ghostly as the rest of him, I’m sure I’d have heard the cogs turning. “Perhaps this is so,” he said at last. “Perhaps Seerblight does not wish to take over the world until he is solid again . . .”

  “And he wants my mum to make tons of the stuff.” I pulled a face. “That’s a plan not going anywhere nice.”

  “At least we finally know what Seerblight wants.” Jem sucked in a breath. “He wants . . . somehow . . . to take over the world.”

  “How original,” I said. “Mind you, if he’s 1000 years old now, it probably was original when he first had the idea.”

  Jem nodded. “I wonder which date shall mark his 1000th birthday?”

  “I know not,” said Sir Guy, “but he talked of a conjuring genius called Vupiter.”

  “He actually mentioned a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter,” I said. “Whatever that is.”

  “A conjunction is when two celestial objects seem close together in the sky, as viewed from Earth.” Jem looked worried. “It marks an auspicious time of good fortune in the old astrological calendar.”

  “And Seerblight’s 1000th birthday happens to fall on the same day? Perfect.” I sighed. “When is the next Venus and Jupiter thingy, then?”

  “I shall check my computer.” Jem crossed to the tattered old floor-length curtains at the broken window and slid out a chunky, retro laptop.

  “Impressive,” I said, unimpressed. “How do you work the keys? They’re plastic, not metal.”

  “I don’t use the keys. I operate computers from the inside, by mental manipulation alone! And I usually piggyback on your mother’s own Wi-Fi connection.” The laptop seemed to switch on by itself and a search engine home page came up. “It is a difficult skill to acquire when you’re an invisible apparition from Victorian times . . . unless you happen to have endless empty years stretching ahead in which to practise.”

  I remembered the way she’d written messages and hijacked apps on my phone and my tablet, and decided respect was due.

  “Such magic is beyond me,” Sir Guy lamented. “Give me instead a good sword, a strong horse and a lengthy song to sing!”

  “Don’t give him that,” Jem said automatically. She looked grave. “It would appear . . . we do not have long. The next conjunction of Venus and Jupiter . . . is on August 27th.” She looked at us. “Four days from now.”

  “Four days?” I echoed. “Seerblight was cutting it fine, wasn’t he? Kidnapping my mum so close to his big moment.”

  “Her coming here – just at the right time – must have been foretold to him across the ages,” said Jem. “Only by using your mother can he make his evil ambitions come true.”

  “And by using you, too, mon brave,” Sir Guy added. “With you in his clutches, she’ll dare not defy him!”

  “Well, it sounds like someone’s got to defy him,” I said.

  “I do not like the idea of rushing into action,” said Jem.

  “I DO!” said Sir Guy (surprise, surprise).

  “Rushing? You’ve had hundreds of years to think it over . . . but now we’ve only got four days!” I bunched my invisible fists. “Rushing’s our only chance.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jem agreed. “Perhaps it’s time we ‘invisible’ individuals joined together and made a team. Got incorporated, you might say?”

  “A team, huh?” Despite everything, I suddenly smiled. “Hey, you know what? I’ve got the perfect name for us . . . Invisible Inc.!”

  Sir Guy looked puzzled. “You have written the perfect name in invisible ink?”

  Jem shook her head. “No, no, he suggests that we are ‘Invisible Inc.’.”

  “That’s ‘inc.’ as in ‘incorporated’, not ‘ink’,” I tried to explain. “You know, like Monsters, Inc.—”

  Sir Guy yawned noisily. “Let us move on! What is to be Invisible Inc.’s first mission?”

  Jem jumped up. “I’ll tell you! I’ll jolly well flipping tell you! Oooh, what a mission it will be. Now we’re cooking!” She stared at the laptop, wiggling her eyebrows – text began to appear in search engines and webpages loaded onto the dusty screen. “Between 1954 and 1982, I experimented with different metals. I wanted to know if some were easier to hold than others – you know, would the molecules in a copper/brass alloy be more responsive to our invisible touch than, say, marine-grade stainless steel—”

  “We get you,” I said quickly. “What did you find?”

  “Hold on, just let me hack into this website . . .” The laptop beeped and Jem smiled. “Oooh, I’m good. Anyway, as I was saying, I did find one metal to be outstandingly responsive . . .” She blushed. “I’m rather ashamed to admit I stole a bar of it from a warehouse to run more tests.”

  I nodded. “And?”

  “It was good!” said Sir Guy heartily. “I hit a chicken-beast with it!”

  “You took the bar without permission and the wounded poultry-geist ran off with it in its beak.” Jem gave him a look that suggested she hadn’t forgiven him for this. “So, although my soul quails at the confession, I had to steal another bar of it.”

  Sir Guy beamed. “It too was good. I hit another chicken-beast with that one!”

  “And lost it in just the same way,” Jem agreed. “Well, the poultry-geists seemed to give up on us after that . . . I didn’t like to keep stealing things, and computers were becoming popular so I learned about working them instead. I never got round to testing any more of that metal, but it occurs to me now that it would make a most powerful armour . . .”

  “Hooray!” cried Sir Guy.

  “And the name of this amazing metal?” I asked.

  “What we need to find,” said Jem, “is the WC!”

  “You mean the water closet?” Sir Guy frowned. “The garderobe? The toilet? The lavatory?”

  Jem was concentrating on the screen. “Aha! A window of opportunity opens for us at noon! But the WC will not be easy to get hold of. We must act as a team.”

  “I will!” Sir Guy assured us.

  “We will,” she said.

  I nodded. And I made a quiet gulping sound. A mission! An actual, dangerous mission that would help us rescue Mum!

  It’s funny that Jem had just mentioned the WC. Because, if I could still use one, just then is exactly when I’d need to go.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Snack Van? ATTACK VAN!

  Have you ever seen three invisible people from different times in history standing in a lay-by not far from a snack van at the side of the road with a 500-year-old pony?

  Well, no, you haven’t. Because they were invisible, duh.

  But even if you somehow sensed their presence . . . were your three invisible people and their horse standing there because they’d hacked into the delivery website of a metal company and were planning a WC heist? In the middle of the day?

  NO. Don’t lie.

  “I cannot help but think,” said Sir Guy (and I didn’t really believe him), “that robbing a horseless carriage for its WC is not entirely heroic.”

  “It’s all in a good cause,” said Jem, though she didn’t look convinced.

  I hoped it was. I felt bad, knowing we were about to scare the heck out of some poor lorry driver. But, with time so tight, we couldn’t aff
ord to mess around. I looked at Jem. “Remind me again what WC stands for?”

  “THE LOO!” said Sir Guy.

  “Oooh, language,” Jem chided him, before turning back to me. “WC is the chemical formula for tungsten carbide. Surely you must know of this chemical compound of tungsten and carbon atoms? It was invented long after my time, but was in full industrial production by the 1930s—”

  “Science isn’t really my thing,” I admitted. “Where does the W in WC come from, then?”

  “Tungsten was originally known as wolfram.”

  So confusing, I thought (and again: Curse you letter W!)

  “Tungsten carbide is incredibly strong,” Jem went on, “with the highest melting point of all the metallic elements. You know, the only thing harder than tungsten carbide is a diamond, so it’s often used in drills and for military uses—”

  Sir Guy yawned noisily. “I prefer to talk about the real WC.”

  “Well, I for one do not.” Jem looked dismayed. “Noah, you live in an age of great inventions and yet you keep your water closets inside the house! Such dirt! So many germs! There beside your toothbrushes and washing implements. Ugh!”

  “What’s so great about outside bogs, all cold and spidery?” I retorted. “Who wants to go to the toilet outside?”

  “I DO!” boomed Sir Guy. “I love it. In my day, we used a hole in the ground with a wooden seat on top. I used to sing about it.”

  Jem looked horrified. “Please don’t—”

  Too late. Sir Guy burst into song:

  “Plop, plop, plop! I go

  And down the chute it rushes.

  Plop, ploppity-plop I go

  It gives me the hot flushes!

  Ploppity-plop, plop-plop-plop-plop—”

  Jem cringed. “Please!” she shouted.

  “Ah, non. Pees I did behind a tree.”

  “I said please! I find that word most offensive.”

  “Which word?” Sir Guy frowned. “Pees? Or tree?”

  I frowned, too. “There’s nothing offensive about a tree!”

  “There would be if I did a poo behind it!” said Sir Guy.

  Jem threw back her ghostly head: “Can we just stop talking about poos and wees!”

  It was time to change the subject. “So,” I said, “is Invisible, Inc. ready for action or what?”

  “I have my sword!” Sir Guy cried.

  “I have the plan clear in my mind,” said Jem.

  “And I have an empty can of Fanta Orange from a bin.” I held it to my mouth. “For amplifying my voice.”

  “Hush!” Jem hissed, with a look back at the snack van. “You will give away our presence here!”

  Smoke was wafting out from the grill. I couldn’t smell it, but imagined the aroma of burgers and sausages and fried onions and yum stuff like that. Of course, imagining didn’t make me hungry, as I had no appetite. But my stomach shook just the same as I saw a large lorry pull into the layby towards the snack van. Moonstick Metals and Ores was written on the side.

  “Okay, here we go!” I whispered – not that anyone visible would’ve heard if I’d shouted. “We’ll do everything just as we agreed – agreed?”

  Sir Guy looked blank. “We agreed twice?”

  “Just stick to the plan,” Jem told him.

  The lorry rumbled to a halt, the engine was switched off and the driver – a bald, portly man with a patchy red beard – got out and headed for the snack van.

  We had to act like ghosts well enough to scare both him and the snack guy as far away as possible. So I walked up behind him, took a deep breath and spoke into my can: “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  The driver stopped as the metallic echo floated eerily out at him. He looked around, so I ducked behind him (I didn’t want him to see the can floating in mid-air – a magician never reveals his tricks, after all!). I did it again, right in his ear: “OOOOOOO-WOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  The driver frowned, stuck a finger in his ear, fished out some earwax and wiped it on his shirt. Then he walked up to the man in the snack van.

  “All right, Wilf!” he said. “I’ll have a cheeseburger and chips, and . . .”

  He broke off at the sound of banging from his truck. I could see Maloney rocking it from side to side.

  “Er . . . Wilf!” the driver squeaked. “You seeing that?”

  But no, Wilf was not seeing that. Wilf was too busy staring as his second-best spatula rose from the draining board all by itself and started flipping his burgers for him. I took my can round the side of the van and did my loudest “OOOOOOOOOOOOO!” yet.

  The driver opened his mouth to scream - and Jem flipped a burger into it. Wilf screamed on his behalf as his knives and forks clattered all over the floor, and leapt out over his own counter to get away, knocking down the driver. They both looked around in a panic as I WOOOOOOOOOOOO!d at them from behind the van. The truck was still rocking from Maloney’s hooves, Jem was making as much of a metal racket as she could with the spatula and cutlery and then, as a grand finale, Sir Guy’s mighty broadsword came pitching towards them, pointy end headed their way. Both of them leapt in the air and sprinted away in terror.

  “Good work,” said Sir Guy. “They will not be back anytime soon.”

  The can slipped from my numb fingers. I felt bad, seeing the mess in the snack van and the hamburgers lying on the ground. Jem used the metal spatula to turn off the grill, looking as rueful as I did. It wasn’t much fun scaring people in order to steal their stuff . . .

  The big knight had already crossed back to the truck to join his pony. “Let me break inside this metal carriage so you may fetch your WC.” He started slashing at the back doors with his sword, denting and scraping the bodywork. “Ha! It is tough and heroic work!”

  “Or we could always try turning the door handles,” Jem suggested, “before another motorcar stops here in search of refreshment and wonders why a lorry stands abandoned.”

  “Pish. You and your reasons!” Looking a bit put out, Sir Guy stood back and let me and Jem tug at the handles. My hands slipped off them a couple of times, but, once I really concentrated, I got a grip and swung open the heavy door. There were lots of crates and boxes inside.

  “While you search for your metal,” said Sir Guy, “Maloney and I will clean up yonder roadside kitchen.”

  I approved. “That’s very heroic of you.”

  Grinning, the underdressed knight set off with Maloney.

  Jem and I got busy scanning the metal supplies inside. “What does tungsten carbide look like?”

  “A grey-black lustrous solid, I believe!” Jem made this sound like the big present on Christmas morning. “Or indeed a fine dark powder.”

  “Look!” I pointed to two large crates in the corner of the lorry, marked WC.

  “Hurrah!” Jem beamed away as she grabbed a crowbar on a shelf and started to prise open the lid of the first crate. “There it is. Tungsten carbide! All ready to be smelted and reshaped and formed into new things.”

  “How are we going to get this stuff back to your place? Touching it’s one thing, but carrying it . . .” I reached down to try to lift a piece of the dark material, prepared for the usual failure. But . . . Whoa.

  The tungsten carbide was light as a feather! It weighed next to nothing. And yet I could grip it so tightly – it just felt plain and solid in my phantom hand.

  “Heavens to Betsy!” Jem tried to take the stuff from me, but dropped it at once. “How intensely interesting!”

  I reached in and pulled out some more blocks of tungsten carbide. It was like lifting Lego. “This stuff is amazing! It’s as if I’m suddenly solid again and, like, really strong!”

  Jem nodded excitedly. “Something in the tungsten carbide is peculiarly sympathetic to the rearrangement of atoms in our transmogrified bodies!”

  “Huh?”

  “And, since you’ve just turned invisible, your atoms are the freshest – that’s why you’re responding so well to the WC!”

  That sounded kind of wei
rd, but hey. I put down the huge hunk of metal and Jem rubbed her hands over it with enthusiasm, like a potter with clay.

  “Er, what are you doing?” I asked.

  “Behold!” She held up her hands – like mine, they were now coated in a fine dark dust. “A dainty dusting of tungsten carbide!” She crossed to the back of the truck, where one of those things delivery people use to wheel in big objects like fridges and washing machines stood. It had rubber handles . . . but Jem could still hold it! “Oh, YES!” she cried. “Isn’t it wonderful? The tungsten carbide dust must act like an energy conductor across the transient interface. With it coating my hands, I’ll be able to hold all my old scientific instruments again!” Jem did a short, formal dance. “I’m so happy, I want to hold a WC party!”

  I smiled. “I’m so happy, I don’t even care how wrong that sounds!”

  Just then there was a massive CRASH and CRUNCH. Fearing the worst, I rushed outside – to find Sir Guy and Maloney had just pushed the snack van down a grassy slope into a tree.

  “There!” Sir Guy put his ghostly hands on his equally ghostly hips. “Now no horseless carriages will come to bother us – because yon layby is all cleaned up. Who says that Sir Guy does not have the big brain, eh?”

  “I can’t think,” I said.

  “Come and join us, Guy!” called Jem from inside the lorry. “Come and join our WC party!”

  Sir Guy looked worried. “You’re going to love it,” I assured him.

  Smashed-up snack vans aside, I could hardly believe our success. One victory to Invisible Inc.!

  *

  We loaded the tungsten carbide on the hand trolley and wheeled it away. Of course, it was the middle of the day, which meant there were lots of people about – lots of people not expecting to find a hand trolley and two crates rolling along by themselves. We stuck to the road in the hope that people would think it was some sort of a self-propelled, automatic trolley. A couple of cars swerved or collided with lamp posts as their drivers stared in disbelief, but we made it back in the end.

  Now I’m not showing off here, but I could move our haul of mega-metal more easily than anyone else, even Maloney (once we’d dusted his tail and got him to curl it round the trolley handle). I mean, we all noticed a big difference between WC and the other metals we’d tried to hold – our fingers buzzed and tingled, our invisible muscles fizzed with strength – but, freshly transformed as I was, I could push the trolley the furthest for the longest. Jem, as the next youngest, got on quite well, too – but Sir Guy, who’d been invisible for so long, found the load heavier than either of us. He didn’t let this get him down, though – he just sang even louder as he pushed to make up for it: